Talari Grows Its Network Monitoring Capabilities

The company's new APN Aware software gives network managers a real-time and historical view of every link in the WAN.

Talari Networks is launching a software tool that will enable IT administrators to get a clearer view of what's happening in their networks.
Talari officials are launching Adaptive Private Networking (APN) Aware, an application that supports the company's lineup of wide-area network (WAN) appliances and offers a centralized place for networking professionals to get a complete and unified view of how their networks are running. Through the new APN Aware software, businesses get data about the real-time status and history of the quality of every individual link in the WAN.
With this information, administrators can more quickly identify problems within the WAN and fix any issues found, increase the availability of the network and improve the quality, according to Talari officials. In addition, they can use the information to enforce service-level agreement (SLA) contracts with service providers.
The data that comes out APN Aware software will help network managers ensure that the networks—whether their own or those from service providers—are performing well, which is important insight given the crucial central role networks play in data centers today, according to Emerick Woods, Talari's president and CEO.

"We allow our customers to understand the behavior of the links they are purchasing from service providers," Woods said in a statement. "Rather than trust the SLAs, they can actually see the performance of every link, including uptime, latency, jitter and loss in each direction — critical information they can use to determine the effectiveness of their investments with different service providers, and in some cases empower them to renegotiate contracts or enforce SLAs with their providers. In an environment where IT is asked to justify every dollar spent, Aware gives them the information they need at a level of unmatched granularity."

Talari's Mercury APN appliances already offer maps of all avenues through the WAN, as well as other data, including the downtime, loss, latency and jitter on each path, according to officials. In addition, the appliances can let network managers know the amount of bandwidth used by each application as it makes its way along the WAN. Talari's APN solution can use the data to create virtual network overlays on the physical WAN, which enables it to steer applications down the most optimal path in the network, based on policies and conditions on the network, officials said.
The APN Aware software is designed to expose this data, giving network managers more information to work with. The software brings together information from the WAN's physical and virtual networks and from applications and stores it in a single database. Networking teams can then analyze the information—both the current and historical data—from maps, graphs and tablets the software creates.
With this information, customers can determine everything from the health of the network to the return-on-investment (ROI) the company is getting from it. Talari officials said a key benefit of the product is that network administrators not only can see data regarding the traffic as it enters the service provider networks, but now can watch once it gets inside.
APN Aware is available now as an optional add-on to the company's WAN appliances. Talari officials will showcase the software at the upcoming Enterprise Connect 2014 event, which starts March 17 in Orlando, Fla.